Pharmacy assistants will protest in Rotterdam for better salaries and price compensation

Pharmacy assistants will take to the streets of Rotterdam Saturday afternoon. They want immediate automatic price compensation and a thirteenth month. But there is more to it.

A patient in a pharmacy who gets pills from another brand and gets so angry about it that he throws the box at the head of the pharmacy assistant. Or who starts swearing at this employee. This happens in pharmacies all the time, according to the organizing action committee of pharmacy assistants. It doesn't make working any more fun, and it also takes extra time to calm such agitated customers. And then, according to the committee, the assistants' salaries don't hold up either, especially with inflation hitting like that.

“A wage increase of 2,5% is a joke. Don't you know how high inflation is?," pharmacy assistant Sermin Sahan who works in BENU Pharmacy Roosestraat in Rotterdam, told Pharmaceutisch Weekblad. The pharmacy assistant is disappointed with the collective agreement for pharmacies that the CNV and FNV unions agreed to last April. It was agreed that pharmacy employees would receive a one-time payment of €300 gross at the end of 2022, as well as a structural wage increase of 2.5%, Pharamaceutisch Weekblad wrote.

The fear is also that otherwise even more people will quit their jobs as pharmacy assistants and the already high pressure on remaining colleagues will get worse. "We can't do our job without the interns - who are supposed to be used over and above the workforce. It's long, hard days. The result is high absenteeism and an even higher workload," said the action committee.

About 200 pharmacy assistants are expected. According to the organizers, it is not easy for everyone to participate because they fear the reaction of their bosses. Saturday they will still demonstrate in their free time, but if this does not yield anything, they will continue during working hours.